Writer-oriented vs. reader-oriented:History and future of research into autobiographical literature in Dutch literary studies

Nowadays, autobiographical literature is omnipresent and takes many shapes. Despite that combining research methods from different lines of autobiography scholarship would be a welcome practice, so far, explicit methodological dialogues have not been a top priority in Dutch literary studies. This article takes the discussion between the two founders of the main research lines in international autobiography studies, Georges Gusdorf and Philippe Lejeune, as a frame to map the history of Dutch autobiography studies. It suggests that this frame enables us to understand the main research lines in Dutch autobiography studies as an author’s oriented line and a reader’s oriented line and exposes the scarcity of explicit methodological dialogues between them. By mapping a trio of recent research approaches outside of autobiography studies that are equally interested in the literary author, this article in conclusion offers some sources of inspiration for a mixed method-oriented future for the study of autobiographical literature